Illegal Levels of Arsenic in Midland Water?

Is there something going on with the water in Midland or is it just me?

Let me preface this first by saying I am in no way claiming that for a fact there are illegal limits of anything in Midland water. I'm just questioning the possibility and giving my own personal account of things that have lead me to that questioning.

Here’s the thing, I’ve been feeling weird since around the end of November, right around the time we started doing Friendsgiving.  At first I thought it had something to do with whatever was used to inject the turkeys we fried.  I figured ok, we’ve used the same stuff to inject and fry about four turkeys over the span of two weeks, maybe there’s something lingering around in my system. I’ve been smelling this weird, kindof sour, un-appetizing smell and I assumed that must be it.  The preparations were all done in our house so that just seemed like a likely source.  More than just the smell I’ve also been feeling nauseous, seemingly for no reason, every day at various times throughout the day.  The longer this went on the more I started to connect the smell and nausea with the water.  When I would shower, brush my teeth, wash dishes or run the dish washer, I would smell this smell and start to feel queezy.  In the last couple of weeks I’ve been getting numbness and a tingly feeling in my fingers.  At first it was just when I was laying on my side using my phone, or sitting on the couch scrolling through TikTok or Facebook but in the last week I’ve woken up several times with my fingers asleep, like somehow the circulation to my hand was cut off at some point but I move around a lot at night so I didn’t figure that was possible.

I know that there are times when the water department will go through a cycle of disinfecting the water and at those times you can see a slight yellow tint to the water.  It’s the most noticeable in the toilet.  However, I haven’t noticed that at all.  The smell has really been getting to me so I thought maybe the city is using a different disinfectant in the water and they put out a notice that I didn’t get.  I checked the city utilities website and the last time there was anything about disinfectant in the water was from June.  I remember that was when I wrote about the water having a yellow tint.  I didn’t see anything recent.

So I decided to do some more digging.  I keep getting the sense that the small must have something to do with disinfectant.  It’s not an organic smell and it’s not something that’s coming out of my pores from food I ate over three weeks ago.

So here is what I found.  Most water departments use a combination of chlorine and ammonia to disinfect the water.  That is done because there are contaminants in the water supply in certain areas.  In our area, according to the EWG's Tap Water Database, Midlands water supply contains a total of 33 contaminants, 16 of which exceed the EWG health guidelines.   The federal governments legal limits in regards to allowable contaminants in water have stayed the same for 20 and in some cases over 40 years.  I’m saying that they are outdated, so just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s healthy.  In our water right now however, the level of one particular contaminant, Arsenic, is over the legal limit.  Since that was actually the first one I saw on the list it’s the first one I looked a little further at.

What I read was that the short term effects of over exposure to Arsenic by way of a persons water supply are, nausea, vomiting, irregular heartbeat, muscle cramping and or weakness and numbness in the hands or feet.

Long story short, the city came out to get a water sample from my house for testing and I’ll be going to the doctor on Friday so see if there is any testing I can do to determine whether or not it is, in fact, the water that’s the cause of my symptoms.

In the meantime go checkout the information on the website above and tell me what you think.

*UPDATE*

Call the Midland County Utilities Department at 432-685-7320 and have them come out and take a sample of your water to have it tested. If we don't draw some attention to the fact that there are a number of of people in the community concerned about the possibility of contaminants in the water causing illness they aren't going to know. I personally think it's a pretty big issue that needs to be addressed and the way we make that happen is by making a little noise.